Step 0: Install Ubuntu

Step 1: Update the Intel drivers

Start by updating your Intel drivers:

Shell

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sudo add-apt-repository ppa:oibaf/graphics-drivers

sudo apt-getupdate

sudo apt-getupgrade

sudo apt-getdist-upgrade

Step 2: Set the kernel options

I had to fiddle a lot to make things work. One of the major problems I got is that the machine wouldn’t properly suspend/shutdown/reboot/logout when I was using the integrated GPU witht the NVIDIA drivers installed.

Step 3: Install the NVIDIA drivers

Then follow this tutorial to install the NVIDIA’s proprietary drivers version 384.59 and reboot.

Voilà! You should be able to use the descrete GPU and it should be listed in the NVIDIA X Server Settings (GTX 1080) in my case:

Step 4: Disable suspend when plugged in

For your information, I compiled a little recap of the last 3 versions available:

As you can see, things are getting better and version 384.59 appears to be the most functionnal so far.

But we’re not there yet: suspend “works” but it won’t resume properly. But the good thing with the Razer Core is that it provides both the discrete GPU and power. So using the NVIDIA driver implies the machine is plugged in. A simple solution is then to simply change the power options to never suspend when the machine is plugged in.

Update: my implementation worked well on “native” OpenGL configuration but suffered from a GLSL-to-HLSL bug in the ANGLE shader cross-compiler used by Firefox and Chrome on Windows. It should now be fixed.

Update 2: you can toggle each cascade frustum using “L” and the camera frustum using “C”.

Motivations

Lighting is a very important part of rendering real-time convincing 3D scenes. Minko already provides a quite comprehensive set of components (DirectionalLight, SpotLight, AmbientLight, PointLight) and shaders to implement the Phong reflection model. Yet, without projected shadows, the human eye can hardly grasp the actual layout and depth of the scene.

My goal was to work on directional light projected shadows as part of a broader work to handle sun-light and a dynamic outdoor environment rendering setup (sun flares, sky, weather…).

During the last Flash Onlince conference, I had the chance to share the latest work I’ve been involved in at Aerys with the rest of the Minko team. We’ve been working a lot on the next major version because we really want it to be a game changer for 3D on mobiles and the web.

You can read the original announcement for more details. But the big picture is that Minko is going to support WebGL. To introduce this new major feature we’ve created a first technical demonstration:

To do this, we are completely rewriting Minko using C++ 2011. This new version will include bindings for ActionScript 3 (and obviously Javascript too). So if you’re an AS3 developer: do not panic! You’ll still be able to leverage your AS3 skills with Minko. Yet if you want to learn new tricks now would be a good time and C++ is a good choice.

To understand the process of working with C++ code targeting the Flash platform and HTML5/Javascript, you can start by reading my slides:

To help AS3 developers migrating to C++, I’ve decided I’ll start gathering resources here on this very blog. If you are interested you can start by:

It was really awesome to be invited to talk about Minko today during the Stage3D online conference organized by Sergey Gonchar. He has done an excellent job in organizing this and I hope people enjoyed attending it as much as I enjoyed being a part of it.

As I promised, here are the slides to this presentation. They are pretty heavy because they embed some videos. Here is the outline of the content of the presentation:

Community SDK

Scripting

Shaders and GPU programming

Scene editor

Professional SDK

Physics

Optimizations for the web and mobile devices

At the end of the presentation, I also demonstrated how Minko can load and display Crytek’s Sponza smoothly on the iPad and the Nexus 7 in just a few minutes of work thanks to the editor and the optimizations granted by the MK format. You will soon here more about this very demonstration wiht a clean video demonstrating the app. but also the publishing process. This is incredibly cool since Sponza is quite a big scene with more than 50 textures including normal maps, alpha maps and specular maps for a total of 200+MB (only 70MB when published to MK).

Normal mapping has been available for a long time inside Minko. At first as part of the minko-lighting plugin and now in the core framework (in the dev branch only for now). The support for specular maps was added recently. Combining normal mapping and specular maps really gives good results. To show how far you can get, here is a little video demonstrating both techniques in the Minko editor:

Minko’s Collada plugin makes it possible to easily import Collada (*.dae) files using the assets loading API. Working with the API is quite simple and there already is a detailed tutorial about that. But the Collada format has its flaws and it is sometimes very complicated to get your exported files to work properly.

That’s why I’ve compiled a new documentation article that explains how to properly export Collada files from 3D Studio Max:

The article details the export procedure itself but also provides guidelines to make sure the exported file will display properly with Minko. It also give details about the supported features, including material, material properties and how the engine will use them. Similar articles will be released for different editors and formats according to the community’s needs.

Of course, as soon as the Minko editor and the MK format will be available we will strongly discourage the use of Collada files in production for many reasons (mainly performances). But you will still need to import those Collada files into the editor first… So here is a little video to show how simple importing assets is with the editor:

Yes: it’s as simple as a drag’n’drop! You will also notice that the textures load automatically and that the editor will let you play the animations and make sure everything works out of the box. The editor will be available in open beta in March…